Harold Edward James Aldridge (born 10 July 1917) is a multi-award winning Australian author and journalist whose World War II despatches were published worldwide and formed the basis of several of his novels, including the prize-winning The Sea Eagle about Australian troops in Crete.
Aldridge was born in White Hills, a suburb of Bendigo, Victoria. By the mid 1920s the Aldridge family had moved to Swan Hill, and many of his Australian stories are based on his life growing up there. Aldridge moved to London in 1938; he currently lives in Battersea, South West London.
The stories that are based on the real living conditions of his hometown of Swan Hill include his 1995 Children’s Book Council of Australia book of the year The True Story of Lilli Stubeck, one of his St Helen series of children’s books. He lived in Cairo for many years, writing several books about the Middle East, including Cairo – Biography of a City and the novels The Diplomat and Heroes of the Empty View. His 1973 children’s novel A Sporting Proposition was adapted for the 1975 Disney film Ride a Wild Pony.
He won a Lenin Peace Prize in 1972 for ‘his outstanding struggle for the preservation of peace’. He has also won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the World Peace Council Gold Medal, and was awarded the Gold Medal for Journalism by the Organisation for International Journalists in 1972.